my innovation journey starts inland, south of morocco s major cities and mighty atlas mountains, just north of the sahara desert, near the quiet outpost of ouarzazate. this part of saharan morocco is known as the door of the desert. the landscape out here, it s almost like it s from another world. feels like we could be on mars. these plains receive three times the sun as parts of northern europe. ..and are home to a world leading project of staggering scale. this is noor, a solar power station, putting morocco at the forefront of pioneering renewable technology. i m used to feeling small, but this makes me feel even smaller. hello, abed, salam. hello, my friend, salam. nice to meet you. nice to meet you, too. this is incredible! and lots of sun. lots of sun, yeah. which is what we want for something like this. yeah. this is not an ordinary solarfield. panels with over 7,000 mirrors follow the sun. and i can hear lots of sounds at the moment. it s quite eerie. is that the pan
And it also helps preventing up to i million of greenhouse gas emission each year, so it s quite an achievement for morocco. electricity generated here goes to morocco s national grid. from there, some is already cabled to spain. it can be a big and reliable partner for either europe or other countries, however it has to maintain this trade off between meeting or answering the domestic demand and international level, so there is this fine lines that morocco needs to assess. and, as the sun moves west, these panels have already completely changed direction. you can really see the evidence of them following the sun. if these seem rather sandy, dusk brings one last surprise. ..as ijoin the night team for operation mirror clean.